AE Renders : Networking a Macbook and Mac Pro (How the h*ll do I do this?)

[Andrew Yoole]

You can’t share processing between computers during the design/preview stage. Gridiron Software used to make a grid-processing tool, but it is now defunct. You can, of course, use multiple processor cores on the one machine.

You can use the AE Render Engine to utilize both machines to render an image sequence, but consider the caveats of that process:
•Both machines must have the same utilized fonts, plugins and codecs installed.
•If you’re using a lot of footage resources, it may pay to copy all the source material locally to each computer, thus avoiding network bottlenecks.
•As you must render an image sequence, you will probably have to recompile that sequence into a Quicktime or similar file after the render, and add audio if required.

Personally, I’d suggest that, unless you’re rendering VERY slowly (like 30 secs per frame or more), there is seldom much advantage in using just two computers rather than one. Render engines really only come into their own on very complex projects with many computers to share the load.

[Guy Thompson]

An alternative method is booting your Macbook in Firewire Target Disk Mode. (older macbooks…) This is more for convenience, not performance.

Assuming you are working on your Macbook internal drive, this allows you to open the project on the Mac, as if it was on an external hard drive. Keep working on the Mac Pro, and then when you are done and want to go home, just eject the MacBook HD from the desktop, and all your files are still together, you don’t have to wait and copy everything back to your MacBook.

Ideally just store your Project/Footage on a fast (FW800/400) external HD, and plug it into which ever machine you are using, you will certainly notice a performance increase over 5400rpm internal laptop HD.